Salvation In Death Part 29

She sulked for a few seconds. Stared thoughtfully at the doorway connecting her office and Roarke's for a few seconds more. Roarke could get into the sealed files in minutes, she had no doubt. And if she'd thought of that before she'd tagged Whitney, she might've been able to justify asking Roarke to do just that.

Now she'd started the tape rolling, and had to wait for it to unwind.

She sent the formal request, added the evening's interviews and notes to her own case file. She pinned more names and photos to her board.

Teresa, Chavez, Joe Inez, Penny Soto.

Then she crossed to the doorway. "I 'm done. I 'm going to bed."

Roarke glanced up. "I 'll be done shortly."

"Okay. Ah, could you make a boomer, on timer? I don't mean now, because, duh, I mean back when you were a kid?"

"Yes. And did. Why?"

"Could you because you're handy with electronics or with explosives?"

"Both."

She nodded, decided it would give her something to chew on until morning. "Okay. 'Night."

"Who or what did Lino blow up?"

"I 'm not sure. Yet. But I 'll let you know."

CHAPTER 15

A MORNING STORM RUMBLED OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS. The thunder, a bit dim and distant, sounded like the sky clearing its throat. Rain slid down the windows like an endless fall of gray tears.

As much for comfort as light, Roarke ordered the bedroom fire on low while he scanned the morning stock reports on-screen.

But he couldn't concentrate. When he switched to the morning news, he found that didn't hold his interest either. Restless, unsettled, he glanced over as Eve grabbed a s.h.i.+rt out of her closet. He noticed she'd removed the cold patch.

"How's the shoulder?"

She rolled it. "I t's good. I sent a text to Peabody last night to have her meet me here this morning. I 'm going to go down and head her off before she comes up and tries to cage breakfast. What?" she added when he rose and walked to the closet.

He took the jacket she'd pulled out, scanned the other choices briefly, and chose another. "This one."

"I bet everyone I badge today is going to take special note of my jacket."

"They would if you'd worn the other with those pants." He kissed the top of her head. "And the faux pas would, very possibly, undermine your authority."

She snorted, but went with his selection. When he didn't move, but stood in her way, she frowned and said, "What?" again.This time he cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her mouth, very gently. "I love you."

Her heart went gooey, instantly. "I got that."

He turned, crossed to the AutoChef, and got more coffee for both of them.

"What's wrong?" she asked him.

"Nothing. Not really. Miserable morning out there." But that wasn't it, he thought as he stood, staring out through the dreary curtain of rain. That wasn't it at all. "I had a dream."

She changed her plans, and instead of going downstairs walked over to the sofa, sat. "Bad?"

"No. Well, disturbing and odd, I suppose. Very lucid, which is more your style than mine."

He turned, saw that she'd sat down, that she waited. And that was more comforting than any fire in the hearth. He went to her, handed off her coffee.

And sitting beside her, rubbed a hand gently on her leg in a gesture that was both grat.i.tude and connection.

"I t might be all the talk about the old days, childhood friends, and so on kicked my subconscious."

"I t bothered you. Why didn't you wake me up?"

"When I woke it was over, wasn't it, and I didn't see the point. And then, just now ... Well, in any case, I was back in Dublin, a boy again, running the streets, picking pockets. That part, at least, wasn't disturbing. I t was rather entertaining."

"Good times."

He laughed a little. "Some of them were. I could smell it-the crowds on Grafton Street. Good pickings there, if you were quick enough. And the buskers playing the old tunes to draw the tourists in. There were those among them, if you gave them a cut, they'd keep the crowd pulled in for you.

We'd work a s.n.a.t.c.h, pa.s.s, drop on Grafton. I 'd lift the wallet or purse, pa.s.s it on to Jenny, and she to Mick, and Brian would drop it at our hidey-hole in an alley.

"Couldn't work there often, no more than a couple hits a month, lest the locals caught wind to it. But when we did, we'd pull in hundreds in the day. I f I was careful enough with my share, even with what the old man kicked out of me, I 'd eat well for a month-with some to spare for my investment fund."

"Investment fund? Even then?"

"Oh aye, I didn't intend to live a street rat the whole of my life." His eyes kindled, but unlike the mellow fire in the hearth, dark and danger flashed there. "He suspected, of course, but he never found my cache. I 'd sooner he beat me to death than give it over."

"You dreamed about him? Your father?"

"No. I t wasn't him at all. A bright summer day, so clear I could hear the voices, the music, smell the fat frying for the chips we always treated ourselves to. A day on Grafton Street was prime, you see. Full pockets and full bellies. But in dreaming it, it went wrong."

"How?"

"Jenny'd wear her best dress on Grafton day, and her hair would be s.h.i.+ning with a ribbon in it. Who'd look at a pretty young girl like that and see a thief, was the thought behind it. I pa.s.sed to her, clean and smooth, and moved on. You have to keep moving. I set my next mark, and the fiddler was playing 'Finnegan's Wake.' I heard it clear, each note, lively, quick. I had the wallet-and the mark never flinched. But Jenny ... she wasn't there for the pa.s.s. Couldn't take the pa.s.s because she was hanging by her hair ribbon. Hanging and dead, as she'd been the last I saw her. When I was too late to save her.

"I was too late."

Roarke shook his head. "She died because she was mine, part of my past. And I ran to try to get her down, across Grafton, with the buskers playing, still lively and quick, while she hung there. But there was Mick. Blood spreading over his s.h.i.+rt. The kill blood. He was mine, too. He took the knife for me. The fiddler kept playing, all the while. I could see Brian, far off. T oo far to reach, so I was there with dead friends. Still children in the dream, you know? Still so young. Even in the dream I thought, wondered, if they were, in some way, dead even that long ago. And me and Bri, all that's left of us.

"Then I walked away. I walked away from Grafton Street, and from the friends who were same as family to me. And I stood on the bridge over the River Liffey, a grown man now. I saw my mother's face under the water. And that was all."

"I could tell you that what happened to them wasn't your fault. Part of you knows that. But another part will always feel responsible. Because you loved them."

"I did. Aye, I did." He picked up his neglected coffee, drank. "They're part of me. Pieces that make me. But just now, standing with you, I realized I can stand all that, stand the loss of all those parts of me. Because I have you."

She took his hand, pressed it to her cheek. "What can I do?""You just did it." He leaned over, kissed her again.

"I can reschedule some stuff, if you want me to-"

He looked at her, just looked, and the heaviest of the grief that had woken with him eased. "Thanks for that, but I 'm better just for having it out." He skimmed a finger down her chin. "Go to work, Lieutenant."

She wrapped her arms around him first, hugged hard. And holding her, he drew in her scent-hair and skin-knowing it would come with him through the day.

She drew back, stood. "See you tonight."

"Eve? You asked me before if I thought your victim, your Lino, would tell someone who he really was. I think, if they stood as family for him, if he considered them part of him-any of the pieces that made him-he had to. He didn't go to his mother, but there had to be someone. A man can't stand on a bridge alone, not at home, not for five years. Even the hardest needs someone to know him."

She managed to cut Peabody off, but barely. Eve jogged down the steps just as Summerset opened the door to her partner. Eve kept going.

"Peabody, with me."

"But I was just ..."

"We're moving," Eve said and pointed toward their vehicle. "Get in. One minute." Eve turned to Summerset while Peabody sulked her Danish- deprived way to the pa.s.senger side. "Roarke could use a call from his aunt."

"He wants me to contact his aunt in I reland?"

"I said he could use a call from her. He's fine," Eve said, antic.i.p.ating him. "He could just use the connection."

"I 'll take care of it."

Knowing he would, Eve climbed behind the wheel, and put her mind back on the job.

"Are we running hot or something?" Peabody demanded. "So a person can't take a minute to have a cup of coffee and maybe a small bite to eat, especially when the person got off a full subway stop early to work off the antic.i.p.ated bite to eat."

"I f you're finished whining about it, I 'll fill you in."

"A real partner would have brought me a coffee to go so I could drink it while being filled in."

"How many coffee shops did you pa.s.s on your endless and arduous hike from the subway?"

"I t's not the same," Peabody muttered. "And it's not my fault I 'm coffee spoiled. You're the one who brought the real stuff made from real beans into my life. You addicted me." She pointed an accusing finger at Eve. "And now you're withholding the juice."

"Yes, that was my plan all along. And if you ever want real again in this lifetime, suck it up and do my bidding."

Peabody stared. "You're like Master Manipulator. An evil coffee puppeteer."

"Yes, yes, I am. Do you have any interest, Detective, in where we're going, who we're going to see, and why?"

"I 'd be more interested if I had coffee." At the utter silence, Peabody sighed. "Okay. Where are we going, Lieutenant, who are we going to see, and why?"

"We're going to the bodega beside St. Cristobal, and I can actually hear you thinking 'breakfast burrito.' "

"Psychic Master Manipulator! What, besides breakfast burritos, is of interest at the bodega?"

Eve went through it, taking Peabody through the interviews, the search results, and the agenda.

"You woke Whitney up?"

She would hone in on that single point, Eve thought. "Apparently. We need the access. Two explosions, one likely in retaliation for the first, both with fatalities. Gang turf. And that's when Lino Martinez and friend skipped town. Lino was upper rung in the Soldados, he had skills with electronics. No way this went down without his partic.i.p.ation."

"And this Penny Soto may know."

"Inez knows something, and the something caused a rift. I t's worth feeling Penny out."

"Do you think he made contact with the old girlfriend, gang friend, and didn't make contact with his mother?"

"I think he didn't make contact with his mother. I think she played it straight with me. I don't think he connected with Inez because the guy was too wigged out to be lying about it. Maybe he burrowed in for five years, but he probably pa.s.sed the bodega most every day, saw this woman-his girlfriend-nearly every day."She thought of Roarke, and his lost Jenny.

"I t would take a h.e.l.l of a lot of willpower not to connect, not to have somebody to talk about the old days with."

Peabody nodded. "Besides, why come back here, specifically, if you didn't want to connect?"

"There you go. And if you want to connect, isn't it going to be with someone you're comfortable with, who you trust? Mom loves him, sure, but she didn't like where he was heading, tried to rein him in-and she's got a new life. New husband, new son. How can he cozy up and tell her he's pretending to be a priest?"

Eve hunted up parking. "I f he connected, if he trusted," she continued as she squeezed into a spot at the curb, "he might have shared his secrets."

Even from the sidewalk, Eve could hear the jingle of the bell as people went in and out of the bodega. She spotted Marc Tuluz from the youth center stepping out with a large, steaming go-cup.

"Mr. Tuluz."

"Oh. Lieutenant ..."

She could see him searching mental files for her last name. "Dallas."

"Right. Morning hit," he said, lifting the go-cup. "I can't fire all cylinders without a jumbo sucre negro. Are you here about Miguel?" He paused, looked fl.u.s.tered. "I don't know what else to call him. Do you have any news?"

"There may be, later today. So, you hit this place daily?"

"Sometimes twice a day. This stuff's probably corroded all my pipes, but hey." He lifted the cup like a toast. "Who wants to live forever?"

"Did you run into Flores here?"

"Sure, now and again. Or if we were both up at the center, and one of us got the jones, he might spring for a couple of hits. Killer burritos, too, best in the neighborhood. One of us usually picked up lunch here at least once a week when we had meetings at the center. I still can't believe ... Is there anything you can tell me, Lieutenant? Anything I can pa.s.s on to Magda? She's having a rough time of it over this."

"We're working on it."